“God is our life. In Him we live and move and have our being. If He had not created the world, we would not be here (and hence could not do our math). If He had not created the world, there would be no oranges, and hence we could not discover that two oranges plus …
Folk Culture and Popular Culture
“Folk culture has the values and aspirations of a community. Popular culture, on the other hand, presupposes the absence of a community of belief or conviction. It is for many a means of escape from such a community” [Kenneth Myers, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1989), p. 61].
The Evangelical Crouton in the Pluralistic Salad
[Many Christian schools] “see our pluralistic society as a great tossed salad, and they are simply one small evangelical crouton . . . Although they would never state it so baldly, they appear to have quietly translated the Great Commission into something like, ‘Therefore go unto all nations, and do your best to fit right …
This is Not What We Meant by a Postmillennial Takeover
“It has not gone unnoticed in the secular world that there is gold in these religious hills. The result is that today there are evangelical publishing houses which are the religious arms of secular corporations, and Songs 4 Worship, a successful collection of Christian music, lavishly advertised on the TV networks was launched by Time-Life. …
Religious Claims Are Always Total
“Religious claims are always total — all-encompassing. If Christ is not the Lord of all, then He is not the Lord at all. To claim that a particular religious dogma is not total is tantamount to the claim that it is not really religious. In short, such limitations are always a denial of the faith …
Fraudulent Meaning
“Postmoderns who have, in one way or another, pointed to the emptiness of life, the absence of meaning, of enduring, stable value structures, are astonishingly close to the truth—far closer, in fact, than many in the Enlightenment period who lived off fraudulent meaning” [David Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), p. …
When the Center Holds
“Institutions worthy of respect and honor derive their respectability from that which is ultimately sacred. The Bible teaches us that creaturely holiness is derivative and that we are to be holy because He is holy (1 Pet. 1:16). All sanctity in Israel derived from the Holy of Holies. This is why respect for any human …
Oblique Nihilism
“Once our world was centered; now it is not. Once there were ultimate principles of criteria; now there are not. Once there was Authority; now there are only authorities, specialists who have mastered a small corner of life’s complexity. We have been left to drift in the flow of melting reality. This is our nihilism. …
Push Ups in the Brain
“And we cannot understand the incarnation of Christ by sitting in neat rows in a classroom, doing push-ups with the brain” (The Case for Classical Christian Education, p. 64).
Seinfeld and De Profundis
“Postmoderns live on the surface, not in the depths, and theirs is a despair to be tossed off lightly and which might even be alleviated by nothing more serious than a sitcom” [David Wells, Above All Earthly Pow’rs (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), p. 177].